More often than not, science fiction depicting the future on Earth conjures up spick-and-span cityscapes: gleaming streets and towers, an ordered and efficient environment, and hidden danger disguised as benign societal mechanisms. What’s seen less often are chaotic, dirty, bucket-of-bolts futures where menace lurks around every corner and people spill out, swearing, from grungy dives….
Fail Safe and The War That Left Its Box Office Cold
There’s an interesting phenomenon in Hollywood: films get made to satisfy a timely cultural zeitgeist, causing a glut of movies with the same topics or themes to come out around the same time. Deep Impact came out so close to Armageddon in 1998 that many misremember it as a cheap imitation despite the fact that…
Black Rain: Hiroshima and the Cold War
Kuroi Ame (Black Rain) Directed by Shohei Imamura Produced by Hisa Iino Written by Ibuse Masuji & Toshiro Ishido Starring Yoshiko Tanaka, Kazuo Kitamura, Etsuko Ichihara, and Keisuke Ishida Distributed by Hayashibara Group, Imamura Productions, and Tohokushinsha Film Co. May 13, 1989 “Today is already yesterday.” Shohei Imamura’s 1989 film Kuroi Ame, based on a…
WarGames: The Only Winning Move Is Still Not to Play
WarGames is a late 20th century film that puts the lie to adults scoffing that teens care about nothing other than food, fooling around, and enjoying the latest pop culture fads. Surprise, surprise: teens don’t want to die in a nuclear holocaust either. Teens are as capable of empathy, love, regret, guilt and fear as any adult —…
What Heroes these White Men Are: A Look Back at M.A.S.H.
In 1970, director Robert Altman released a film that, despite its blatant anti-war rhetoric and heavy criticism of Cold War attitudes, would win several awards including five Academy Award nominations and an Oscar for it’s screenplay, and a designation of “culturally significant” from the Library of Congress. M.A.S.H — and the TV show that followed…
Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three: “Adolf, who?”
Even the name “Cold War” brings to mind long, slow, depressed periods of time. Yet, Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three offers constant humor and a spin on post-war Germany that I found mostly amusing, but often confusingly devoid of references to Nazis. When someone makes an uncomfortable parody of the U.S.’s current political state I hope…
Metal Gear: The Weird Difference Distance Makes
I don’t like playing Metal Gear. I love experiencing Metal Gear. I love Solid Snake. Because I love him because there is enough in the game to make me love him, enough character interaction and gameplay opportunity to ask me to love him and exhibit why I might stick around, and because I stick around…
